Link failed?

Works for me

http://calvinayre.com/2015/07/24/pok...-poker-career/

Link not working for me either. Please someone screenshot and host on imgur.

Link is working but it would be a minimum of 7 screenshots, too lazy sorry.

Thank you sir.

Link works for me. It's kind of a sympathetic article as the interviewer states from the 2nd line that he's a gambling addict too so it's taken from that perspective. Though not sure that's something a pro poker player handling other people's money wants to be sympathized with.

Notable points of the interview for me:

--When asked why he didn't just ask a friend for a loan it was because he didn't know when he could pay that person back (and pride). Throughout the rest of the article it kind of confirms that he doesn't have access to the money to cover all his debts for this right now (e.g. says he needs to look for income outside of poker, etc). A bit different from what he said ITT that he has "the means to do so" in terms of paying back.

--And speaking of not paying back, he admits he would have never have paid back the oversold first bullet if he wasn't caught, despite already being caught about the 2nd bullet. So that pretty much debunks all those guys arguing he handled this well right after or whatever and confirms what the rest of us have been saying regarding how this played out. He got caught lying about a 2nd bullet when confronted by Herm, but until this thread came out and was forced admit the further scam, he wouldn't have said anything. I would've been personally affected by this deeper deception, so that's pretty frustrating to hear. It's simply absurd to consider someone who'd do that "top 5% in ethical standards".

EDIT: I don't ever expect the full explanation for something like this to ever make sense because it's obviously a highly irrational course of action, but in my humble opinion, I just prefer my guilty parties to leave out the parts where they speak so confidently that it's a one-time mistake or that they know they're going to get through this or come out stronger for this. He even seems to judge an investor for their reaction saying one of them wasn't "correct" (maybe me? lol). Someone who does this is not the victim so definitely not the one who should be reassured. I get that they probably need to tell themselves that in order to rationalize and get through the rough backlash, but keep it private. Saying it publicly just kind diminishes their apology/admissions for me and adds to the frustration.

picked up on this too.

jesus that was painful reading

Ben resorting to the tried and true strategy of answering softball questions from sympathetic reporter rather than face the music here on 2+2

Same sociopathic nonsense we've heard before. "Pride" is like the textbook sociopath justification for breaking the rules

He just posted an apology at a Spanish forum. Here's the translation:

http://www.poker-red.com/foros/showt...=1#post1319959

I'm really sorry that I have to post a story that has affected two friends close to the Spanish poker community here. I'm sure many people has already heard the story of what happened last week in Las Vegas. Anyway, I wanted to post here my personal vision for different reasons. I've spent several days at home, enough time to think through what happened and I feel that I'm ready to explain it with a fresh mindset.

First 5-6 months this year have been very difficult to me in what's related to poker. I've travelled through all the EPT circuit with almost no time to rest since the beginning of the year, nevertheless, results didn't came along. I knew I was doing things right and despite results weren't coming, sooner or later the trend had to change. Meanwhile, I planned a pretty aggressive tournament package for the WSOP. If after the 6 weeks of tournaments things didn't go well, it will meant I would have lost a big part of my bankroll. Like I said before, that roll was already very damaged after the first months of the year.

I usually tend to sale action for the big tournament series and the WSOP were no exception. I sold 30-40% of the higher buy-in events and swap between 10-20% depending on the tournament and if I had managed to make a deep run on any of them. In the beginning I was focused 100% in poker and in getting to make some money. Mi idea was to party only when there was anything to celebrate. WSOP started well, with some deep runs but with no specially big results.

4th of July, before Main Event started, I played a $1,600 tournament at Wynn, where I came near to the top spots again, ending 17th. That was something hard to digest but I had to change my mindset at soon as possible and focus for the Main Event. I felt exhausted, but Main Event is the best tournament of the year and, after all, I felt ready to play it. I had the confidence in myself which is why I decided to cancel a couple of swaps and re-bought some % to people that had invested in me.

Tournament didn't go well and ended up busting on day 1. At that point I started to sink, facing the fact of coming home out of money, with no bankroll to keep playing this kind of events, and that's something that got me really worried. I had enough money to pay investors thanks to some small cashes that I made, but I knew that it was time to go home. Nevertheless, in my tournament package there was still one bullet: the Venetian Main Event.

At that moment I was feeling so frustrated about poker that the only thing that I wanted was to go home. I didn't feel mentally ready to play. I played a previous event, a $1k with re-entry, with a very big field, but I didn't make ITM either. At this point, I started to make a series of mistakes and that's why I'm writing this post.

I found some Swedish friends playing Ultimate Texas Hold'em (a game where you play against the dealer). I had played it sometime but not for big money. I decided to try and recover some of the lost money but I started losing. It started to affect me to see that not even there I was able to win, so I started to play more and more money, money slowly leaking until I realized that I was starting to lose money that wasn't mine.

There was a point where I didn't even had the money for the Venetian buy-in. At that moment I should have admitted what happened to investors and left Las Vegas. Instead, I panicked when I realized that I couldn't face my mistake and then it was when I made the worst decision in all this matter. I contacted some players to ask if they wanted to buy action in my $5,000 tournament at the Venetian. I had already sold a 55% and the 35% was destined to my backing agreement.

I sent a message to Adrian [Mateos] and Sergio [Aido] telling them that I was selling action and if they wanted to buy a share. They quickly said yes and kept a 20% each with two bullets and a 1,15 MU. I told them that I had the intention to play two bullets. That meant I had sold a 130% of my tournament and had swap another 20% (the very same day of the tournament), so I would undoubtedly have serious trouble if I made a deep run.

I played day 1B and get busted after the dinner break. I told Adrian (and two other investors) that I had played two bullets that very same day and had busted both. Obviously it was a lie. Next day I woke up feeling very bad for what I had done and had full intention to say the truth about I had only played one bullet. I started contacting the people I hadn't updated yet about how my tournament went, to explain them that I had played one bullet only and got busted. Then, that very afternoon, I sent a message to Adrian telling him that I wanted to speak with him. I had to tell him what happened face to face and explain that I hadn't played the second bullet and that I had the intention to give his money back, but he was still playing the Main Event and wouldn't finish until later that evening. I believe Sergio was already flying home by that time, so I left a message to him saying that I had the intention to gave his money back.

Before having the chance to speak directly to Adrian, another investor started asking me about the tournament after telling him that I had played one bullet only. He asked for the receipts to me that very afternoon and then posted at one forum [2p2] asking to everyone if, according to what happened, they felt like I had tried to cheat him. At that moment people started to realize that I had oversold, so I had to publicly admit, and specially to investors, what happened. It was a really disgusting feeling when I had to meet Adrian face to face to give him the explanations and admit what I had done. Somebody I have had a friendship with for quite a long time and that I have seen how he has become the person he is nowadays. I clearly saw, in his eyes and his voice, how disappointed he felt for what I had done, something that I totally understand. With Sergio I've only be able to speak through messages although I've unsuccessfully tried to speak with him on the phone too.

I've had a really long week, besides the whole trip back home to think and reflect on what has happened. How I've let myself down like this and how I've failed to people who had me for a good friend, a good person. On what's strictly financial matters, I've paid what was due to investors from my WSOP package and have assured Sergio and Adrian that I will give their money back, I'm already working on that. One thing I'm sure about is that they know that I want to make things right as much as I can. I perfectly know that what I've done has no excuses and can't be easily forgotten. The only thing I want is to make whatever it takes to fix what I did wrong.

Personally, I got the intention to take a break from poker. There are many goals I want to achieve within this industry, that hasn't change at all. I realize that I can't act like nothing happened but I need to step back from the poker world for a while, a time that allow me to rethink and realize how I came to screw things up this way, so I won't make a mistake like this ever again. No doubt, I've learnt my lesson in all this.

I've realized that I'm in a point in my life where I can't only play poker for a living. I've always been solid, financially speaking, thanks to poker but now I realize that this has drag me to a limit that I never thought I could reach, damaging people really close to me in the process. I was to proud to admit that my bankroll was in bad shape. I think this is a problem that many people has going to face due to the change in the poker nature. Nonetheless, it's harder and harder to make a living from this industry. I hope that writing this story at least I can help prevent others to make this mistakes, that could have been avoided if I would have talked and asked for help to somebody else.

Since I started my poker career I have felt as a part of the Spanish poker community myself, more and more with the years. This community's support can't be compared to anyone else and I'm proud to be part of it. Furthermore, most of my best friends, met through poker, are from Spain. For this reason I felt like I owed an explanation to the Spanish community about what happened and, more than anything, I want to apologize. I really hope that, admitting this mistake, trying to fix it in the best way possible and fixing what has happened in myself, some day -when I'm ready to get back to the poker circuit, it will help to recover the respect and support from you all.

-Ben

Tyvm for translating that, was curious what it said

I just can't wrap my head around the fact he keeps describing how guilty he felt about lying about firing the 2nd bullet and was going to confess that, yet was still planning to hide how he oversold the 1st bullet before being outed on that too.

He actually differentiated the lies in his mind, instead of just wanting to come clean the whole way. It's why I won't ever feel 100% certain this hasn't happened before or would happen again.

His entire explanation reeks of "fk, I got caught, how do I spin this?" And should be completely discounted imo

Actions speak far louder than words

At no point do I feel like he's ever been completely honest or forthright with everything despite having had many chances to do so, including these interviews/apologies. He's got multilayered deceptions that he just keeps trying to maintain until he has no other option except to admit to them. Even now, things like his Venetian play just stick out as untruthful or denials to me.

It seems to me he identified which people he would be more honest or less honest with, knowing he could take advantage of their trust/patience depending on their relationship.

For example, I'm just a guy he's only met briefly IRL so he thought he could be more distant. Our communication took place after Herm had already confronted him privately--and supposedly after Ben had woken up "feeling really bad" (his words in these apologies) about lying about the 2nd bullet.

He lied to me about leaving Vegas so he couldn't settle up. But even worse, when I brought up this thread to him concerned that I wouldn't get refunded I told him the amount I thought he owed me WITHOUT the Venetian $5K refund in it since I assumed he legit busted. Yet he never corrected me once or tried to tell me the amount should include a refund to the tainted $5K entry even after the overselling was discovered ITT. I'm sure he'll claim that was his intention, but we said the lesser amount w/o the Venetian refund three times in our conversation. I guess I'm just not worthy of the truth like others were.

For a person who was supposedly feeling bad or knowing he was "caught", that simply doesn't add up. A person who is capable of delineating his lies like this clearly has more going on.

I feel bad for the guy. one of the people he scammed didn't treat or speak to him correctly. I mean what's their problem?

What stands out to me here in this interview are these contradictory quotes about his personal non-vegas financial situation:



...followed by



edit: Like a previous poster said, just this type of non-100% honesty just comes off as super shady.

Too bad he can't just go to rehab to wipe away his sins like celebrities.

derail: i noticed a few weeks ago that calvinayre.com stopped working for me ... located in ireland and i asked another irish guy (same prob for him)

Link really doesn't work.

But whatever.

It's just another link about another scammer. There will be another one soon.

Except I wasted my time clicking on this one.

Not a big deal. Some guy exposes himself as a sleazebag and wrecks his entire reputation, and my only problem is that someone posted a bad link.

Life is good. It's great to not be a sleazebag.

Made me lol.

calvin ayre link def works for me but it's not worth reading anyway, just a big cloud of hot air and bull****

If you read that interview and see sociopathy where most see humility, humanity, and remorse, then I truly feel sorry for you.

What happened in your life to make you so cynical and embittered?

come on buddy, that interview is the classic equivalent of celebrity oprah interview where they cry how sorry they are

Fwiw, fakelogic's personal details are somewhat damning and clearly in conflict with some of ben's latest, less credible statements.

Ben's story clearly contains more than a few rationalizations and inconsistencies that conflict with his stated intention of coming clean and taking his lumps. The self-deceptions in his story were to be expected in the immediate aftermath since he was likely in shock emotionally. But now with a few week's remove it is damning that he does seem to try and spin little details in his favor. That said, human pride is a funny thing.

Overall, it still seems to me that Ben is a decent guy who got caught up in unusually difficult circumstances that led to terribly poor decisions, but little details are beginning to trouble me on the margin.